The Giving Tree for Belle

Living at Village Green has been one of the biggest blessings in our life!  We have loved being able to serve in our ward and have such wonderful neighbors and close friends. I've also gotten to know lots of the Village Green people from doing hair out of my basement for the last few years. For Christmas this year our friends from Village Green put together a Christmas Tree Fund for Belle and her funeral cost and everything. This was such tender mercy and we feel so blessed that all these poor graduate students and their families would take the time to put this together and gift this to us. Not only the money, but the messages and the meals all were so thoughtful. Words cannot express the amount of gratitude I feel for these great people! 

This Christmas actually two of my neighbors found out they were in similar situations with their babies- one even with a little boy with Trisomy 18. I feel sorry, but yet so blessed by the Lord and his plan to put us in each others paths at this time in our lives. It's a sad reason to know someone so well, but such a tender mercy and I'm grateful for the relationship it helped my build with Todd and Alli Miles and Dahlin and Mallory Darais. 

Preps for Christmas and Belle

Around the time of my birthday this year we found out we'd be having a little girl :) We also found out at the same time that she would most likely have trisomy 18. We later got an amniocentesis that confirmed she did have it. This was a very challenging time as they told us we would have 1 week to decide if we wanted to medically terminate the pregnancy as our daughters life expectancy was little to none. We decided to give her the longest chance possible and continue to carry her. This made the end of pregnancy a lot more stressful then the last two even. Belle and I had appointments at least once a week. We thought she was going to come out at Christmas since she hadn't been growing anymore, but happily found out that she had grown a little and would make it a little longer.  

Laine's 4th Birthday

Kwazi off the Octonauts

We LOVE THIS BOY! How fun it is that he is in our family! He is such a caring boy that notices everyone and is always wiling to help others. He is super smart and has the memory of an elephant- he is following Chad in his ways of personality, but a slightly louder version. Oh Boy I am glad I'm this boys mom!

Projects

Chad and Laine have both been busy at our house... Chad made his own DuckBlind and it worked really well. Laine on the other hand decided he wanted to be a hairdresser like his mommy and took scissors to Amy's hair. She was all too happy to sit there on the couch and let him snip away- he did make it quite a challenge to fix this time. I am proud to at least point out he was smart enough to not touch my hair scissors this time, but alas he still did cut hair so I can't be too proud. He only halfway listened. However at our house we now have two projects accomplished. :-)

Rootinn TOOTIN HALLOWEEn

This year for Halloween we carved each of our pumpkins we got from Ditmars- I tried to carve Minnie Mouse, but discovered I'm not the best at carving :-) We all had fun though and Laine and Amy really liked when we lit them up in the dark. As for costumes this year we ALL dressed up... I'm bummed though because Chad never gets dressed up and I got him to do it this year, but failed to take a picture. Chad was a tooth- it was just two white poster boards that he drew the anatomy of a tooth on (funny side note- at our trunk-o-treat in our ward all the dental students were all talking about what tooth it was- I didn't know). I was a tooth fairy to go with Chad and Laine was Jake and the Neverland Pirates and Amy was a very cute Cinderella.   We also got to go visit the dental school for their annual Halloween trick or treat.  It was a good time visiting daddy's school.

Raf and Nora Short- Laine and Amy's best friends